Willravel

I was watching the video of recently released innocent Guantanamo detainee Lakhdar Boumediene this morning and I kept coming back to one thought: why the hell does everyone think that Guantanamo is full of terrorists? At what point did that debate happen, because I don't remember it. The last I heard—the last anyone heard, these were people were collected from Iraq, Afghanistan, and all over the world and were not tried for anything at all. They are detainees because they are being detained. If they were tired and convicted, they'd be convicts. And then we find out that these people that have not been tried are being tortured (not just waterboarding, but repeated beatings, genital mutilation, rape, sexual assault, etc.). And then we find out that Guantanamo is being closed, huzzah! Now everyone is saying that we shouldn't let the terrorists go? People don't want "terrorists" on American soil?! They're not convicted terrorists, you numb-skulls!

Every single person that vote for the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (every Republican senator with the exception of Lincoln Chafee and Democrats Jay Rockefeller, Ken Salazar, Tom Carper, Mark Pryor, Tim Johnson, Bob Menendez, Frank Lautenberg, Ben and Bill Nelson, Debbie Stabenow, and of course Joe Lieberman) assumed that the people detained were guilty even though none of them were tried. Have we all gone stupid? Do people not comprehend why the right of habeas corpus is necessary?

We have hundreds, perhaps thousands of Lakhdar Boumedienes being detained across the world right now. We have innocent people that have been detained for years, tortured repeatedly, and the only public concern seems to be about allowing these detainees to be held in maximum security prisons on US soil.

Why are so many people skipping the part where all of these men, women, and children are innocent until proven guilty? Why are people throwing habeas corpus out the window and assuming guilt? Are the stupid people controlling the national discussion or are the corrupt people controlling the national discussion?

Seaver

Because no POW has ever been given a trial? Very few insurgents/spies/saboteurs have ever been given habeas corpus in a time of war?

The fact of the matter is capturing combatants in a combat situation can not lead to enough evidence to pass a modern trial. Any half-retarded lawyer can say everything is unprovable as there's no fingerprint evidence, other witnesses outside of the soldiers who picked him up, et al.

Effectively the lawyer can use the same defense and get hundreds of people off. "Where's the miranda rights?"

In regards to closing Gitmo, I say put them in general prison population and let them be handled like child molesters get handled.

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"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

filtherton

Because this country is full of people who sleep better having betrayed their country's founding ideals in the name of temporary safety.

Willravel

I'm sure you can see how labeling someone an insurgent/spy/saboteur without evidence in order to avoid trying them would be prone to abuse, Seaver. Lakhdar Boumediene was not an insurgent, spy, or saboteur at all. He was totally innocent. And yet he was kidnapped and tortured for 8 years. The Supreme Court even had to step in to get him released and it was only a 5/4 decision!

A man kidnapped from his home country and for which there was no evidence of wrongdoing wasn't just held without trial and tortured, but people here in the US are fine with him not being tried. When did people stop caring about guilt?
You really think everyone in Gitmo is a combatant? Lakhdar Boumediene was not a combatant. Most of the people released from Gitmo weren't captured on the battlefield but were rather taken off the street (extraordinary rendition). Lakhdar Boumediene was arrested off the street by the Bosnian government because of pressure from the US government. He was found innocent by a Bosnian court, but the US abducted him and then held him in Gitmo for 8 years.

I will not abide a break with reality on this. Lakhdar Boumediene was not a combatant.
After being tried and found guilty, yes, but not before then. You don't get to ignore habeas corpus because it challenges your preconceptions about the guilt of detainees.

roachboy

the notion of prisoners of war doesn't quite apply to the folk rounded up by the bush people under the aegis of the "war on terror"---and the category "detainee"was invented out of thin air as an extension of the understanding that was current in the more explicitly--um--irregular phase of the bush period that prisoner of war did not, in fact cover these people.

as for the question of who controls the discourse: i think there's several factors that are playing into what control means---there's the problem of continuity that obama already buckled before when he decided not to prosecute the people who designed this fucked up policy. afghanistan is the logical extension of the "war on terror"and obama said from the outset that he understood it in those terms. there's a legitimacy problem that obama also ran up to the edge of addressing an then buckled in the face of. (here's my cake. i am also eating it.) there are separate problems for the republicans. the democrats who were in office were also almost across the board implicated in approving this stuff. and there's a passive television dominated media environment in which cost-effective news gathering practices apparently make it just dandy to accept and run whatever footage handed out and the press conference of your choice. these all converge of delightful matters like how to manage a fundamental political crisis that would be unfolding in the middle of something that's more than just an economic crisis, but more a transitional phase from one worldview that enframed capitalism into---well, what? nothing it seems like at this point.

and there's what filtherton said.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Shauk

was that the 1st time? or the 2nd time?

roachboy

the cold war, the threat of instantaneous nuclear annihilation...center of american elementary school civics training for a long long time.
maybe we assimilated duck-and-cover all too well.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

mixedmedia

Perfect example of what the OP is trying to illuminate. All the hand-wringing and public debate about the unprecedented detaining of captured people at Guantanamo and what we should call them in their unprecedented-ness has apparently been forgotten and we revert to using an old, comfortable term: POW.

My opinion on the OP: Most people don't care. They simply don't care. They accept what they are told and go on about the really important things: working and spending money, ad infinitum. Everything will always be fine as long as I keep working and spending money. Want to know what really captures the public imagination anymore? Stand in a grocery store checkout line.

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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Sun Tzu

I have to admit I hadnt kept up the Gitmo issue much. This thread was the first time I heard the name Lakhdar Boumediene. I was shocked to read his story. It seems "reliable intelligence" has really sent the US in a bad direction. Where is this intelligence coming from?

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To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.- Stephen Hawking

Willravel

That's a really good question, Sun. Why was Lakhdar Boumediene perused with such tenacity when he's clearly innocent? What was gained by his kidnapping and torture?

inBOIL

There are still those who believe that people must have faith in their government, and that that faith is irreversibly damaged by any admission or suggestion of worngdoing by the government. It's the same argument that some DAs use to oppose DNA tests that the Innocence Project offers to pay for. They view the people's loss of faith as a greather tragedy than denying the rights of innocent people. That or they believe that since the USA is good, what the USA is doing must be good, therefore everyone in Gitmo must be bad.

It's the same principle in starting the kidnapping/torture of a suspect. At first, the evidence against anyone is going to be imperfect, so it's easier to become convinced that someone is a terrorist. Once you're convinced, it's easy to dismiss evidence to the contrary.

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And you believe Bush and the liberals and divorced parents and gays and blacks and the Christian right and fossil fuels and Xbox are all to blame, meanwhile you yourselves create an ad where your kid hits you in the head with a baseball and you don't understand the message that the problem is you.